Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have a wide range of applications. Applications such as high speed communication systems often require ADCs with low distortion or linear distortion that may be corrected using known techniques. In practice, the outputs of many ADCs have nonlinear distortion in addition to quantization error inherent in the conversion of an analog signal to a digital signal. There are many causes for the nonlinear distortion, including nonlinear components such as inductors, capacitors and transistors, nonlinear gate transconductance, gain errors in amplifiers, digital to analog converter level errors, etc. Nonlinear ADCs often have variable time constants that change with the input. Changes in time constants may depend on the input, the rate of change for the input (also referred to as slew rate), as well as external factors such as temperature. The effects of the changing time constants are often more pronounced in high speed ADCs where the slew rate change in the input is high. To improve nonlinear distortion, some of the existing ADC designs use physical components that are less sensitive to input changes. This approach, however, is not always effective. Some nonlinearity in the physical components is usually unavoidable, which means that the ADC typically will have some nonlinearity. Furthermore, the special components often lead to more complicated design and higher device cost.
It would be useful if the nonlinear distortion in ADCs could be more easily compensated. It would also be desirable if the compensation technique would not significantly increase the complexity and cost of the ADCs.